How to Find (and Fix) Broken Links on Your Website

Every website collects broken links over time. Nobody sets out to create them. A page gets renamed during a redesign. A product is discontinued. A blog post links to a tool that shut down three years ago. A migration changes the URL structure and misses a few redirects. A menu item still points to a page someone deleted last spring.

Individually, each one seems small. Together, they add up to visitors hitting dead ends, customers who can't reach the product they wanted, and search engines spending their time crawling pages that don't exist. The good news is that broken links are one of the most fixable problems on any website. You just have to find them first.

This guide covers six ways to find broken links, from free to paid, how to decide which ones to fix first, how to fix each kind, and how to stop new ones from piling up.

Why broken links matter more than they seem#

They lose visitors at the worst moment. A broken link usually appears exactly when someone is trying to go deeper: clicking to a product, a pricing page, a signup form, or the next step in a guide. A dead end at that moment often means they leave.

They cost sales directly. On an online store, a broken link in the navigation, a category page, or a "related products" block means products people can't reach. On a service business site, a broken "Contact" or "Book a call" link means leads that never arrive.

They waste search engines' attention and your link value. Search engines follow links to discover and understand your pages. Internal links pointing at dead pages waste that effort and weaken how clearly your site's structure comes across. And when other websites link to a page on your site that no longer exists, the value of those links is mostly lost until you redirect them.

They make a site look neglected. Visitors notice. A site full of dead links reads as a site nobody maintains, and that undermines trust in everything else on it.

Broken links aren't usually a dramatic ranking problem on their own. But the cost is steady: fewer conversions, weaker internal structure, and lost value from backlinks, every day they're left in place.

The different kinds of broken links#

It helps to know what you're looking for, because different tools find different kinds.

• Broken internal links: links from one page on your site to another page on your site that returns an error, usually 404 Not Found. These are the most important to fix, because you fully control them.
• Broken external links: links from your site to other websites that no longer exist or have moved. Less urgent, but they still frustrate visitors and look careless.
• Broken backlinks: links from other websites to pages on your site that no longer exist. These don't show up on your own pages at all, so they're easy to miss, and they're where lost SEO value hides.
• Broken images, scripts, and files: images that fail to load, downloadable PDFs that 404, missing stylesheets. They break pages visually even when the page itself loads.
• Redirect chains and loops: links that technically work but pass through several redirects before landing, or loop forever. They slow pages down and can eventually break.
• Soft 404s: pages that say "not found" to the visitor but return a normal success status to search engines. They confuse both.

6 ways to find broken links on your website#

1. Google Search Console (free)#

Search Console shows which of your URLs Google tried to crawl and got a "Not found (404)" response. Open Indexing > Pages, scroll to the reasons pages aren't indexed, and click "Not found (404)." You'll see the list of URLs, and for each one, you can inspect it to see where Google found the link.

Good for: finding the broken URLs Google actually encountered, including ones linked from other websites.

Limits: it's delayed, it doesn't directly list every page on your site containing each broken link, and it won't show broken external links from your site to others.

2. A site crawler (free for small sites)#

A crawler visits your site the way a search engine does, following every link from page to page, and reports every link that leads to an error. Screaming Frog's SEO Spider is the best-known desktop crawler, and its free version crawls up to 500 URLs, which covers many small sites completely. For each broken link, a crawler tells you both the broken URL and the pages that link to it, which is exactly what you need to fix it.

Good for: a complete, one-time sweep of your whole site, internal and external links included.

Limits: it's a snapshot. It tells you what's broken today, not what breaks next week, and running it regularly is a manual job.

3. An SEO site audit#

Most SEO platforms include a site audit that crawls your site on a schedule and reports broken pages, broken links, and redirect problems alongside other technical issues. MyKavo's Site Audit does this with 89 checks across 22 categories, sorting issues by severity and listing the exact URLs where each one appears, with CSV export. Free MyKavo accounts can audit 150 pages per crawl.

Good for: broken links in context with other technical problems, sorted by how much they matter.

Limits: audits run on a schedule, so a link that breaks between audits waits until the next one.

4. A bulk URL status checker (free, instant)#

If you already have a list of URLs, such as your most important pages, the links in your main menu, or the URLs from an old sitemap, a bulk status checker tells you the HTTP status and response time for each one in seconds. MyKavo's free Bulk URL Status Checker checks up to 20 URLs at once with no signup, and the Redirect Chain Checker traces every hop for a URL that redirects.

Good for: quick checks after a migration, a menu change, or a redesign, and checking a specific list without a full crawl.

Limits: it checks the URLs you give it. It doesn't discover links on its own.

5. Backlink tools, for broken backlinks#

To find other websites linking to pages on your site that no longer exist, you need a backlink tool. Ahrefs, Semrush, and similar tools can list your pages that return errors but still have external links pointing at them, usually sorted by how many sites link to each one. These are often your most valuable broken links to fix, because each redirect recovers value from links other people built for you.

Good for: recovering SEO value from old pages that still have backlinks.

Limits: these are paid tools, though some offer limited free versions.

6. Your analytics 404 reports#

Your 404 page gets visits, and those visits tell you which broken URLs real people are actually hitting. In Google Analytics, find the page title of your 404 page and look at which URLs showed it, and where those visitors came from. This tells you which broken links hurt real visitors most, which is a great way to prioritize.

Good for: prioritizing by real visitor impact.

Limits: it only shows broken links someone has already clicked, and it depends on your analytics being set up correctly.

Which broken links to fix first#

On a site of any size, you'll find more broken links than you can fix in an afternoon. Prioritize in this order:

1. Broken links on your money pages and navigation. Homepage, main menu, footer, pricing, product pages, cart, checkout, signup, and contact. These affect the most visitors at the most important moments.
2. Broken pages that have backlinks. Redirect these to recover value from links other sites gave you.
3. Broken pages that get traffic. Anything showing up often in your 404 reports or in Search Console.
4. Broken internal links in your most-visited content. Your top blog posts and guides.
5. Broken external links. Update or remove them when you're updating the content anyway.
6. Everything else, in batches during regular maintenance.

How to fix each kind of broken link#

Update the link. If the page it pointed to moved, change the link to the new URL. This is the cleanest fix for internal links, because it avoids a redirect entirely.

Redirect the old URL. If a page moved or was replaced, add a 301 (permanent) redirect from the old URL to the most relevant new page. On WordPress, a plugin like Redirection handles this, and SEO plugins often include redirect managers. Shopify has URL redirects built into its navigation settings. Redirect to the closest equivalent page, not automatically to the homepage. Sending everything to the homepage frustrates visitors and search engines tend to treat it like a 404 anyway.

Restore the page. If a page was deleted by mistake, or it still gets traffic and backlinks, bringing it back (or publishing an updated version at the same URL) may be the best fix.

Remove the link. If there's no good destination, remove the link or replace it with a working reference.

Fix redirect chains. If a link passes through several redirects, update it to point directly at the final URL, and collapse chained redirect rules into single hops.

Make your 404 page useful. Some broken links will always slip through. A good 404 page with search, links to your main sections, and a clear way back to the homepage turns a dead end into a detour.

Why broken links keep coming back#

If you fix every broken link today, you'll have new ones within months. That's not failure. It's how websites work. Links break because sites change:

• A redesign or migration changes URLs.
• A content editor renames, merges, or deletes pages.
• A product sells out and its page is removed.
• A plugin, theme, or app update changes how menus or links are generated.
• External sites move or shut down.

The expensive broken links are the ones that break on important pages and stay broken for weeks because nobody runs a crawl until the next quarterly cleanup. A menu link that 404s for a month on an online store isn't a technical footnote. It's a month of lost sales.

So the goal isn't a one-time cleanup. It's finding out quickly when links break on the pages that matter most.

How to stop new broken links from piling up#

Crawl regularly. A monthly crawl or scheduled audit catches most new broken links before they accumulate.

Check links after every big change. After a migration, redesign, menu change, or bulk content edit, check your key pages and navigation right away. A bulk status checker makes this a two-minute job.

Redirect whenever you change a URL. Make "add a redirect" part of the process any time someone renames or removes a page.

Monitor your most important pages continuously. For your navigation, top landing pages, and anything tied to revenue, a monthly crawl isn't fast enough. You want to know the day a link breaks.

Where MyKavo fits into this#

MyKavo is our product, so here's exactly what it does for broken links.

On every scan, MyKavo checks the links on each page you monitor, along with its content, SEO tags, scripts, and layout, compared against a baseline you approved. When links on a monitored page start returning errors, you get an alert that says so plainly, for example "17 internal links now return 404," ranked by severity so a broken link in your main navigation is treated more seriously than a dead link in an old footnote. Alerts go to email, Slack, Discord, or a webhook, and push notifications reach your phone if you're in the Android app's early access. Because MyKavo also records what else changed on the page, you can usually see what broke the links, such as a menu edit or a template change.

For the full site, the Site Audit crawls every page and lists broken pages, broken internal links, redirect chains, and other technical issues, sorted by severity, with the exact URLs and CSV export. Free accounts audit 150 pages per crawl, and the Pro plan ($20 a month) runs larger audits up to 1,500 pages per crawl, with daily scans on your monitored pages. On WordPress, the free MyKavo plugin checks pages after every plugin, theme, and core update, so a link broken by an update gets traced to that update.

And for a quick check right now, the free Bulk URL Status Checker and Redirect Chain Checker need no account.

Honest limits: MyKavo monitors the pages you choose and audits your own site. It doesn't track backlinks from other websites, so for finding broken backlinks, use Ahrefs, Semrush, or Search Console's 404 report.

A broken link checklist#

1. Check Search Console's "Not found (404)" report.
2. Run a full crawl or site audit and export broken links with the pages linking to them.
3. Check your navigation, footer, and money pages first with a bulk status checker.
4. Use a backlink tool to find broken pages that other sites link to.
5. Look at your 404 page in analytics to see which broken URLs real visitors hit.
6. Fix in priority order: money pages and navigation, pages with backlinks, pages with traffic, top content, external links, then the rest.
7. Update links where possible, 301 redirect where not, and avoid redirecting everything to the homepage.
8. Set up regular crawls, and continuous monitoring on your most important pages.

The bottom line#

Broken links are one of the easiest website problems to fix, and one of the easiest to ignore until they've cost you real visitors and sales. Find them with Search Console and a crawl, fix the ones on your navigation and money pages first, redirect pages that have backlinks, and then put a routine in place so new ones get caught early instead of at the next big cleanup.

Check your key pages right now with the free Bulk URL Status Checker, then let MyKavo watch your most important pages and tell you the day a link breaks. Start free, including a site audit of up to 150 pages.